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Just after 4 a.m. on a recent Friday, while most of the neighbors in her leafy Boston suburb
were still asleep, Jennifer Guidry was in the driveway of her apartment, vacuuming the inside of
her car. The early-bird routine is a strategy that Guidry, a Navy veteran and former accountant,
uses to mitigate the uncertainty of working in what’s known as the sharing economy.

Guidry, 35, earns money by using her own car to ferry strangers for Uber, Lyft and Sidecar, ride
services that let people summon drivers on demand via apps. She also assembles furniture and tends
gardens for clients who find her on TaskRabbit, an online marketplace for chores.

Her goal is to earn at least $25 an hour, on average. Raising three children with her longtime
partner, Jeffrey Bradbury, she depends on the income to help cover her family’s food and rent. That
has become more unpredictable of late. Uber and Lyft, her driving mainstays, recently cut certain
passenger fares. Last month, TaskRabbit overhauled the way its users select their helpers;
immediately after the change, Guidry’s stream of new clients dried up.

“You don’t know day to day,” she said. “It’s very up in the air.”

In the parlance of the sharing economy, whose sites and apps connect people seeking services
with sellers of those services, Guidry is a microentrepreneur. That is, an independent contractor
who earns money by providing her skills, time or property to consumers in search of a lift, a room
to sleep in, a dry-cleaning pickup, a chef, an organizer of closets.

For people seeking a sideline, these services can provide extra income. Beyond the ride
services, there are businesses like Airbnb, the short-term-stay broker; task brokers like
TaskRabbit and Fiverr; on-demand delivery services like Postmates and Favor; and grocery-shopping
services like Instacart.

“Someone on Sidecar doing the same commute they do on a daily basis and picking up a rider, it’s
really free money for the driver and reduced cost for the rider,” notes Nick Grossman, the general
manager for policy and outreach at Union Square Ventures, which is an investor in Sidecar.

In a climate of continuing high unemployment, however, people like Guidry are less
microentrepreneurs than microearners. They often work seven-day weeks, trying to assemble a living
wage from a series of one-off gigs. They have little recourse when the services for which they are
on call change their business models or pay rates. To reduce the risks, many workers toggle among
multiple services.

“Having a diverse portfolio is the best protection,” says Sara Horowitz, the founder and
executive director of Freelancers Union, an advocacy organization. “People are doing this in the
midst of wage stagnation and income inequality, and they have to do these things to survive.”

To try to insulate herself from the uncertainty, Guidry makes herself available to drive most
weekdays in the predawn darkness. At that time, she figures, ride seekers are likely to be business
travelers headed to the airport, a profitable fare.

About 4:30 a.m., Guidry ushered me upstairs to her home office, careful not to wake her family
sleeping down the hall. She pulled up TaskRabbit on her laptop to check if any new offers had come
in. She scrolled through Craigslist, where she occasionally picks up work as a private chef.
Nothing doing.

She glanced at the sofa bed by her desk, musing aloud whether she could rent it out on Airbnb. “
The thing is, I have kids,” she said, gesturing to a child-size desk on the other side of the room
where her son Aden, who is 5, does his schoolwork. So much for the couch-rental idea.

Resigned, Guidry activated her Uber iPhone, a device that the company issues to its drivers. On
her personal Samsung Galaxy phone, she activated the driver modes for her Lyft and Sidecar
apps.

Moments later, the Uber phone pinged with a ride request. She accepted immediately. But, ever in
risk-mitigation mode, she waited two minutes before leaving, lest the rider change his mind.

“There’s nothing worse than driving all the way over to some place and then having them cancel,”
she explained, heading down to the driveway.

A little over an hour later, Guidry returned home, having completed an airport drop-off. She had
made $28, not accounting for the cost of gas. She would do a second airport run, then come back to
wake her family and make breakfast.